Railway 200: exhibition train nearly ready as its dedicated '66' receives new livery

Railway 200’s four-coach exhibition train Inspiration is close to completion at Derby's Loram workshops, ready for its official launch at the Severn Valley Railway on June 27.

The National Lottery Heritage Fund has contributed £250,000 towards the project, which is to reconfigure four former Greater Anglia Mk 3 coaches for their new role.

Inspiration will tell the story of the railways, complement the National Railway Museum’s Wonderlab activities at York, and promote rail businesses.

The train, to be hauled by GB Railfreight 66710, will visit 60 locations across the UK until the end of the year, as part of the Railway 200 celebrations, and then fulfil a wider educational role during the first six months of 2026. Its long-term future is undecided.

Network Rail owns the Inspiration vehicles, which will be hauled to their destinations by two rebranded GB Railfreight Class 66s, together with a former Nightstar generator vehicle.

The project, which was begun in early 2024, has nominally extended the lives of the coaches by a year, with reconditioned BT10 bogies, corrosion repairs, careful weight balancing, and repanelled interiors. No passengers will be carried while they are on the move.

The coaches are three former Greater Anglia Mk 3b 80-seat Open Firsts, built at Derby in 1985, and which began their careers on the West Coast Main Line.

Two of them were Pullmans (11092 Ernest Rutherford and 1093 LS Lowry), while unnamed 11101 was the last built. The fourth coach is former ScotRail and GA 10406, a 1975 Mk 3 which started life as Edinburgh-Glasgow push-pull Open Standard 12020.

Inspiration’s first bookings are:

June 27-July 6 SVR Kidderminster;

July 8-10 Birmingham Moor Street;

July 12-15 London Euston;

July 18-19 London Waterloo;

July 20-21 Margate;

July 23-29 Bluebell Railway.

August destinations include Norwich and Lowestoft stations, Doncaster Railport and NRM York.